SEXUAL & REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS INCLUDING HIV&AIDS

Standing Committee on Sexual & Reproductive Health and Rights including HIV&AIDS (SCORA)

OUR VISION

SCORA’s vision is to contribute towards a society where harmony in the diversity of individuals coming from various backgrounds in terms of sexuality, gender identity and sexual and reproductive health and rights is encouraged equally and without discrimination.

OUR MISSION

Our mission is to encourage members of society, particularly young adults, to broaden their knowledge and skills in sexual and reproductive health and rights. We strive to provide members with the tools for advocacy within the local community in a respectful manner, free from prejudice. We wish to increase the exposure of typically taboo topics, and for medical students, to raise awareness on how an individual’s sexual and reproductive health identity has links to their healthcare barriers and needs. Our goal is to fulfil SCORA’s vision through active workshops, campaigns and collaborations with other standing committees of AMSAHK as well as local external organisations.

Projects

SAFE ABORTION WORKSHOP

It is estimated, by the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong, that over 40% of the women surveyed have had abortions. Amongst these cases, 37% have resorted to clinics in Mainland China and 23% turned to illegal measures for the procedure. Abortion itself is often seen as a taboo topic including in Hong Kong. However we believe that it is our responsibility as members of AMSAHK to advocate for the prevention of unsafe abortions. Safe Abortion Workshop is a workshop organised by us in collaboration with Mother’s Choice, it aimed to educate medical students in the topic of abortion. Consisting of interactive discussions and informative talks, our workshop informed students the differences between safe and unsafe abortion, different laws and regulations in various countries and most importantly how abortion affects us as medical students and future medical professionals. We hope to expand the number of participants in the upcoming year so more medical students can become more aware of the issue and explore ways to combat with the overlooked stigma.

SEXUAL VIOLENCE INTERVENTION WORKSHOP w/ SCOPH

The Sexual Violence Intervention Workshop, held in November, was designed for students of various majors, including Medicine, Law and Social Work. As future professionals, we may encounter patients/clients who may be victims of sexual abuse. Therefore, we believe it is important to cultivate skills and acquire knowledge on how to intervene in such situations. This workshop was held in collaboration with Melissa, a former social worker at RainLily and Grain of Soul: Community Support Programme in Caritas Family Crisis Support Center. She led talks, discussions as well as interactive simulation sessions, where participants put themselves in the shoes of victims of sexual abuse, developing empathy and a greater understanding in the difficulties the survivors encounter in seeking help. Through this event, not only do we hope to raise awareness on gender-based violence, we also hope to empower participants as advocates for survivors of sexual assault.

SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN

As topics related to sexual and reproductive health and rights are often considered as taboo in Hong Kong, we hope to increase the awareness of such through a series of Instagram posts, focusing on a different aspect related to sexual and reproductive health each month. This included topics of contraception, HIV&AIDS and other sexual diseases etc. To reinforce the content explained in our story posts, we also incorporated interactive functions to consolidate the readers’ understanding, collaborating with other associations to convey more comprehensive knowledge to our audience. As SCORA is a new department in AMSAHK, and with the vast popularity of social media, we believe it is effective to utilize social media as a sustainable platform to promote facts and knowledge on sexual and reproductive health even in future years, slowly breaking down the stigma in our society.